[Bug]: Future dates parsed to past

[uwemeier-sclable]

Contact Details

No response

What happened?

Expected behaviour

When providing a date in the future, there should be an indication, that the date is in the future (e.g. "in 20 seconds")

Actual behaviour

When providing a date in the future, the absolute value of the time difference is used, resulting in an incorrect representation, that always talks about the time being in the past

Steps to reproduce

1. Run this code:

 DateTime futureTime = DateTime.now().add(const Duration(seconds: 20));
 String futureTimeString = GetTimeAgo.parse(futureTime);
 print('Future time string: $futureTimeString');

2. See the output: I/flutter (17717): Future time string: 19 seconds ago

Technical Details

1. extend Messages with a prefixFromNow() and `suffixFromNow()
2. in _get_time_ago.dart use either *FromNow() or *Ago() depending on whether dateTime is after now or not.

Version

^2.3.2

What devices are you seeing the problem on?

Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac, Linux

OS

Android 12

Relevant log output

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[nixrajput]

Hi @uwemeier-sclable,

Thanks for reporting this issue and providing clear reproduction steps 🙌

You are correct - currently the library always takes the absolute time difference and applies the past tense suffix (e.g., "ago"), even when the given DateTime is in the future. This leads to incorrect strings like "19 seconds ago" instead of "in 19 seconds".

We’ll be extending the Messages class with prefixFromNow() and suffixFromNow() methods, and updating _get_time_ago.dart to choose between FromNow and Ago depending on whether the input time is before or after DateTime.now().

This enhancement is planned for an upcoming release. I’ll update this thread once it’s implemented and published.

Thanks again for pointing it out 👍

Regards,
Nikhil